Fortress Of Solitude

Prospero:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

I love solitude.

I'm a bit of a recluse and perhaps a little misanthropic, at that.  Had I stayed in the monastery all those years ago, I would most likely be a hermit by now.  I went into the entertainment industry because I loved movies and plays, but I hated being in the audience.  I really don't like crowds, though one-on-one, I can tolerate people.

That sounds worse than it is.  I have good social skills and can work a room with the best of them.  All my years of stage training gave me the ability to develop personae to deal with situations I don't like.  But if I had my druthers, I'd rather be here at the mountain house alone.

I think people have lost the art of solitude.  They don't know how to be alone, sans media.  They've lost the desire for solitude as a means of re-creation and re-habilitation.  Have you ever noticed that superheroes, writers and artists all seek solitude?  They always have a place to be alone - to think, to pray, to just blank out.

I have my mountain house.  I come here to be alone whenever I can, to drink single-malt scotch, smoke Cuban cigars and write.

One of the ways I write/think was taught to me by my high school English teacher.  It's called free writing.  I just sit in front of the computer and start typing.  Doesn't matter about grammar and punctuation.  Just write everything that passes through my brain on its way to Universe.  It's amazing the ideas and thoughts that come when you do it, but it requires solitude.

I practice a form of meditation that Lao Tzu called, "quieting the tree of chattering monkeys" in my mind.

I light a cigarette and stare at the smoke.  It rises completely uniform for two or three inches, then erupts into chaos.  It's as if it was very quiet, then it had a thought, and that led to a thousand other thoughts.  And that reminds me of my own mind.

I like to watch a column of miniscule red ants emerge from a tiny hole in the cement on the porch rail.  As they do, a hornet the size of a hummingbird swoops down and grabs them one at a time and eats them.  I think of a line of cars on a highway with a 747 swooping down and eating them one by one.

I watch the butterflies, of which there are millions here - from lacewings the size of my thumbnail to giant black ones the size of a saucer.  They always seem to go in a single direction, though they loop and swirl around in a fanciful dance on the breeze.

I have a plant in the garden that grows so fast that I can watch a leaf unfurl, if I sit still for two hours or so.  I also line up the Moon at night with some fixed point and watch it move across the sky.  When you consider how big the Moon is, and how far away, you realize that you are hauling ass around this planet without feeling it...unless you are alone and quiet.

Then I think about the fact that I live on the equator, which means that I am hauling ass around the planet standing perpendicular to the orbital axis.  That's a weird feeling.

We humans don't get enough solitude.  We are so inundated and mesmerized by our society that we forget to just stop, turn it all off and watch.  It's like shooting some class IV rapids.  When you're in them, your mind is extremely focused on the next rock or wave, pausing just barely enough to look slightly beyond.  At the same time, sitting on the bank watching someone go through the rapids is a completely different experience.  Most of us choose to shoot the rapids without ever sitting on the bank to watch.  It is two perspectives of the same event, but one lets you appreciate the Big Picture, while the other gives you hardly enough time to look beyond your nose.

I really hate large groups of people.  More than 10 means that if one panics, you're likely to be killed in the stampede.  I don't like that feeling.  I don't like that large groups of people act irrationally.

Put another way, imagine that you are in a large swimming pool with a few dozen people all jumping and swimming and splashing.  Try to stand perfectly still.  You can't.  All those people are creating turbulence that buffets you and moves you around, even though you are making an effort to be still.  Then they all get out.  After a time, the water calms and eventually you can stand perfectly still and make hardly a ripple in the water.  Now stretch out your arms to the side and bring your hand together as fast as you can.  Look at the eddies and waves you make with one single movement.  Now imagine what you and all those around you are doing to the Universe around you.

I've been in solitude for 24 hours now.  I haven't spoken a single word in that time and have made as few movements as I can.  I laid out in the grass and watched the sky.  I went out in the rain and felt it hit me like icy needles.  I sat on the porch for hours and watched and listened.  I made a loud noise and listened to the guitar across the room resonate in harmony without touching it.  I isolated some vibrations that I really like and grokked them as fully as I could.

And I sought out the vibrations of people I love and harmonized with them.

I love solitude.

There's a reason that aesthetics have sought the most barren and isolated places on Earth for millennia.  They are trying to limit the number of vibrations around them so that they can first understand them fully, and then learn to control them.

There's a reason why thinkers and artists seek solitude.  They need to limit the amount of information coming at them as much as possible in order to focus on particular ones.  superman had the fortress of solitude.  Batman had the Batcave.  Every real writer has a writing shack.  Every inventor has a lab or workshop.  Every person who actively participates in the creative process needs solitude.

Some people are terrified of it.  I don't know why, but they are afraid to be alone.  The idea of doing nothing scares the hell out of them.  I've seen people go nuts with it.  I've witnessed them lose their identify because no one was there to witness it.  I know people for whom a day without speaking is a nightmare.  I don't understand it.

I love solitude.

The monastery where I lived is located in the Chama river canyon in northwest New Mexico.  Just south of the monastery, the Paloma river canyon forms a nearly 90-degree angle from the west.  At the confluence of the rivers, there is an island covered in aspen trees and wild asparagus.  On one precise September evening, the Chama canyon is already dark by 5pm.  By 6pm, the Sun sets precisely down the Paloma canyon, causing an amazing shaft of light to beam out of the canyon and light up a the aspens with their gold leaves and silver bark.  There, in the middle of the inky darkness, is a fire that does not consume its host.  And on the opposite wall of the canyon were the shadows of trees a thousand feet tall.  It is one of the most beautiful sights I have ever witnessed, and it lasts precisely 10 minutes...and then it's gone until next year.  And I have only seen it once over 30 years ago.

If I had not been in solitude, sitting and waiting for nothing, facing just the right direction, I would not have seen this amazing thing.  And being in solitude, and in the right frame of mind, I was able to burn that scene into my mind so that even now, in the quiet of the mountains, I can close my eyes and see it perfectly, reliving every single sencond of it as if I were sitting in that canyon so long ago and far away.

Solitude is a gift and it should never be wasted or reviled.  It is a time when the most beautiful things happen and we have the time to sit and absorb them.  It is the time when the mud settles and the water becomes perfectly clear for a moment.  It is a time when you can actually feel other life.

And that reminds me of one other story.  While I was at the monastery, I made a retreat to do a 'spirit circle'.  A spirit circle was practiced by certain native American people.  It involves going out into the wilderness and clearing a circle about 10 feet across.  You strip naked and enter the circle with nothing...no clothes, no food, no water.  You sit in the center as still as you can.  When you have to move around, you can not step outside the circle.

The amazing thing?  After about half a day, you can feel things enter your circle.  I could feel insects moving around me.  The second night, I was nearly asleep when a bob cat entered.  I felt it like a slap on my right shoulder, and when I turned, we were eye to eye, not moving.  He eventurally walked away.  Deer came up and rubbed their heads on me without fear.  I could sense the dew and turned my head up to drink it.  It was the most amazing sense of oneness I have ever had, and one I have longed for ever since.

Every human being should practice solitude.  In fact, I'm convinced that most of what's wrong with society is the lack of solitude, or even desire for it.  One is never so connected to humanity than when one is truly alone.  The creative force explodes with energy when we limit the outside influences and dive into solitude like a vast pool of clear, still water.

I love solitude.

Just now, I took a break to go out in the back garden and play with the plants.  By chance, I rubbed the tomato and rosemary bushes with the same hand, then paused to smell my hand.  It's intoxicating.

I love solitude...until the neighbor shows up with off-key karaoke at the crack of dawn.

Far Afield And Back Again

Of late, I have been absorbing the thoughts and work of several esteemed researchers, among them Joseph P. Farrell, Peter Lavenda and the great Texan, Jim Marrs.  The thread these three men have in common are that the Nazi diaspora at the close of WWII and the assassination of JFK were seminal events in the current course of history.

I have to say that their arguments are compelling, their documentation unimpeachable and their speaking erudite and informative.  You can find extensive interviews with all three with a quick search of YouTube.  I won't link it all here as the volume is quite extensive, and the voyage of exploration is best steered by the individual.

I do, however, want to express some insights that I have had in listening, reading and pondering the work of these gentlemen.  Certainly, they echo things I have thought about since at least my university days, but they have refined and documented what I understood by intuition.

One of the main points that seems to resurface in the work of all three researchers is the fact that the Nazi ideology was not hatched in Germany.  Many of the things we generally revile were in fact originally American, and were only implemented openly and forcefully in the Nazi regime.

Concepts like racial purity were hatched out of Darwinism and had their first expressions in the US as the eugenics movement through people like Margaret Sanger.  Institutions like Planned Parenthood and Child Protective Services are the modern day descendants of the original.  Arianism was simply one branch on the evolutionary tree whose roots were in the Anglo-American sphere.

Fascism, as I have described elsewhere, is not the brainchild of Hitler or Mussolini.  In fact, fascism began in Imperial Rome, as was reborn in the American federal system.  The marriage of business and government, one of the defining aspects of fascism, can be seen in the 1800s American system, with philosophical roots in the federalism papers and even the Constitution.

Where most Americans go astray is that they believe six impossible things before breakfast.  They believe that they are champions of democracy throughout the world, yet they live in an elitist republic whose founders reviled democracy.

The novelty of the American system was that it allowed people to choose their elite, rather than have them imposed from the top down.  By its very nature, a representative government is an elitist organization.  The primary difference between that and what had come before was that the people were allowed to vote on who they wanted to be ruled by, rather than having it imposed on them by heredity or force.

Every aspect of the American system is designed to dilute the vox populi.  Electing an elite called Congress, with two chambers, one a more general populist assembly, and the other more elitist.  Even the Electoral College was put in place in order to prevent the direct selection of the president.  Rather it kept that task for land owners and insiders.

That Americans think they live in a democracy, and impose democracy at the point of a gun throughout the world, is one of the most amazing forms of mass delusion I have ever encountered.  The American people live, breathe and eat an elitist lifestyle, while at the same time thinking they have power and can rightfully impose that power on other people.  In fact, democracy has not existed for centuries, even millennia.

Stranger still is that democracy and communism are ideological cousins, yet I daresay the average redreck would bow up at the suggestion that his beloved military is bombing the world into communism through the use of fascism.  Yet, that is exactly what is happening.

Where people have gotten so befuddled is that they are not precise in their thinking or use of language.  It is not entirely their fault, as elites use the confusion to their advantage, but it behooves every individual to take responsibility for their own education and research.

The basic problem is that we tend to blend the lines between economic and political systems.  Economics concerns itself with how commerce is conducted, and politics focuses on how power is exercised.  They are two completely different concepts, though they are often wedded, in the same way that a man and a women are very different creatures, yet they join to create a single household.

Within the concepts of economics and politics, there are various ways of implementing them.  In economics, there is capitalism, communism and a great variety of other systems.  Within politics, there are ideas such as democracy, socialism and fascism.  The subgroups within each are only means by which we institute commerce and exercise power.

Interestingly, democracy hardly exists in the world, yet people are being bombed into oblivion on a daily basis in order to institute it.  On the other hand, communism exits nearly everywhere, and people are trying to eradicate it, thinking it is a natural enemy of democracy.  That no one seems able to separate these ideas is the cause of so much cognitive dissonance today.

Economic and political systems are not mutually exclusive.  They can be mixed and matched quite easily, as the system are only the way in which we do things.  That economics and politics go hand-in-hand is obvious.  No one can deny that wealth is power, but we gain wealth through economics, and exercise the power through politics.

Democracy no more implies capitalism, than communism excludes it.  In fact, anyone who has read Marx and Engels would know that his ideal political system is a natural outgrowth of the evolution of economic systems, and that inevitably, all economic systems are evolving towards communism.  However, communism on a mass scale has not yet existed on the face of the Earth.  The USSR and China are NOT communist states.  They are socialist states, which is a form of politics.  Socialist states can implement communism, or they can choose capitalism or fascism or any of a myriad of other economic systems.

In the same way, democracies can be capitalist or communist or use any of dozens of other economic systems.  In fact, at their root, democracy and communism would seem to be ideal partners.  Democracy spreads the exercise of power over an entire population, and communism espouses the concept of each person giving and receiving as they are able.

It is entirely possible for one village to be a communist democracy within itself, but conduct its outside affairs (commerce) on a capitalist basis.  None of this would cause the Universe to spin out of control.  It is simply the means by which certain ideas and activities are arranged and conducted.

It gets much more complex as these systems are hybridized over time and location.  An example of pure communism is monasteries of any stripe.  In any given monastery, the members contribute to the overall good according to their stregnths, and receive from the community according to their needs.  But, the monastery usually produces some product, which it trades with the outside world through some form of capitalism.  The difference being that profit from trade is distributed acorss the community as the need arises, rather than enriching certain individuals.

On an international scale, we see the US is a constitutional republic, which conducts its economic affairs as capitalists, while China is a socialist state that also conducts its economic affairs through capitalism.  The difference is how the wealth, and thus the power, is distributed and exercised within the confines of their communities.  Neither is purely one or the other, and both are evolving as they go along.  The US is becoming a fascist state with socialist tendencies, while China is becoming more democratic while espousing a communist ideal.

The US welfare system is a communist concept, while China's emerging middle class is a sure sign of capitalism.

None of these things is inherently evil.  Communism as an ideal makes perfect sense.  I am an expert in leather craft, so I contribute shoes and belts to the community.  My child is sick, so I consume extra health care from the community as my family needs it.

Capitalism allows me to enrich myself and my family on the quality of my leathercraft, to the exclusion of others.  If I want more or better health care for my child, I buy it because my personal wealth allows me to, to the exclusion of others.  However, I am free to choose to contribute part of my wealth to distribute better health care to those who can not afford it.

In either case, the basic impulse is neither good nor bad.  It is only how it is exercised, and by what means we propagate our ideal in the world that becomes good or evil.  If democracy and capitalism are so good, as many Americans believe, then why do they feel the need to force it on others at the point of a gun?  Why not let others see the benefits of our system and choose freely to implement it, in whole or in part, as they see fit?

Because organic systems are constantly in a state of flux, with new ideas coming into vogue, and old ones being modified to fit new circumstances, it is easy to see how people can become confused.  However, Americans must wake up to the fact that they are being manipulated to believe one thing, while violently supporting another.  Furthermore, they are being duped into seeing enemies where none exist, in order to provoke them into supporting inherently evil agendas.

At the basis of all political and economic systems is the mandate that the individual educate themselves.  If they can not think and act in clear and concise ways, then they are at the mercy of those who do.  Thus, they become tools for elites who use them for ends which are anathema to the individual's goals and beliefs.  The ubiquitous use of TeeVee to manipulate mass audiences through the use of symbols is causing so much suffering and misunderstanding in the world.  It is incumbent on every human being to learn what is being done to their minds, so that they can put a stop to elitist agendas that are abhorrent to those things we consider good and desirable and moral and ethical.

Fortunately, the Universe provides balances for all things.  The problem is that Universe does not chose and direct, it simply is.  Thus, we can choose our fate and how we treat our fellow human beings, or we can have it chosen for us by a Universe that always rights itself, but without regard to the constituent pieces of the whole.

Yes, western elitists have been pursuing a program of global domination for centuries.  North America and South America are prime examples.  Yes, they are trying to create a New World Order that will impose the will of the elites on the global populace.  However, they are finding a foil to their plans created by the Chinese and the eastern world.  While we are all using the same economic and political tools, our fundamental goals and means are quite different.

In Universe, for all yin there is a yang.